“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
— William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Help me to understand, somebody. I might have been confused or I might have been completely oblivious as to President Joe Biden’s age and as to his mental and physical competences which he needs in order to perform his duties, now and in the near future — but I never lost sight of the existential threat that former president, Mr. Donald Trump, and his MAGA supporters pose to the Constitution of the United States and to the republic which it has undergirded for centuries.
Help me to understand, somebody. Although I am well aware that no election is just about one issue as the needs which exist within the populace are as wide as they are varied, and as they are quite complex — including issues like inflation, like racism, like poor policing, like women’s rights, and even our government’s tepid response to the slaughter in Gaza and Israel — I never lost sight of the threat that former president, Mr. Donald Trump, and his supporters pose to the United States.
And so, although I am pleasantly taken aback by this new burst of enthusiasm for that central theme in this year’s presidential and congressional elections, with Vice-President Kamala Harris having been placed at the top of the DNC ticket, and as the poster person for the preservation of our democracy, why did the enthusiasm towards plugging the hole which had been made in our ship of state, by the oligarchs and by the fascists among us, take on renewed urgency? Why was it made to wane in the first place?
It was startling to me to witness how the DNC and their donors went into a panic mode the very moment after the President bombed in his debate with Mr. Trump, more than they were about the threat to the country that persists to this very day since that fateful event of January 6, 2021 — and even in reference to all clandestine activities which led up to that day. For an electorate, while dangling precariously over a deep crater of steaming, molten lava, on a scorched and fraying bridge of rope, to spurn a lone and an aged figure clutching at it, the best way that he could, to eschew his efforts because he is old, simply, escaped me.
Any port for a storm I say. There would be no time to debate the frailty of bone, of sinews and of muscle from the one with outstretched arm and hand trying to save me. When I fell into the gaping darkness of a manhole as a child, I was just glad that someone lifted me out of it before the onset of concomitant shock had set in.
For a country that professes to believe in big ideas and in the power of big ideas, it appears that it might have been nothing more than sheer talk about saving democracy, or that it was suffering from a woeful, but temporary, anaemia of big ideas. Many people within the DNC could not see pass President Biden’s age, with him having a relatively young Vice-President by his side, to what the man actually represented or personified. It was rumoured for instance, by insiders within the DNC and Congress, that some could not see pass Vice-President Harris’ gender nor her race, willing, it seemed, to take a huge and fateful risk on giving advantage to anti-democratic forces than to give up on their deep-seated prejudices. But now, hope is, suddenly, renewed! The enemy is within their sights again! Sally forth! Unto the breach again, dear friends! Hurrah!
When does the image of the threat posed by the enemy to troops, hunkered down in the trenches, change because their commanding officer does not look well or seems to be incapacitated? When does colour, or gender, or socio-economic status alter the reality of shrapnel exploding from enemy ordinances? How do their varied and their sometimes tense cultural and religious beliefs, brought into their theatre of war from their streets back home, take priority and then be allowed to blunt their fears of cold steel, glistening in the hot sun, from a bayonet charge coming over mounds of earth and through gnarled barbed-wire, which have been stretched out across broad battle lines? Where do they find the time to berate each other, while covered in blood and by gore, and not focus on blasting the enemy to smithereens — to kingdom come?
It appears to me that a lifeless scarecrow, one placed conspicuously in an open field, to keep marauding birds from consuming precious crops, possesses far more weight in gold than do some of the so-called trojans of democracy — both within the electorate and in the political directorate — in the United States. The story has been told how the allied forces in World War II used the body of a dead civilian, all dressed in the uniform of one of the allied armies, with a satchel containing fake sensitive intelligence papers, to deceive the Germans as to where their attack against them was really going to take place. It was not the dead man, per se, who had deceived the Germans, but it was the very ideas wrapped up in his corpse.
How many times have we read from the pages of history how the power of ideas, written on leaflets, were unleashed by one army into the territory of an opposing army to help win a battle instead of the deployment of traditional bombs and bullets? If military commanders, employing the grey matter that the Creator had endowed them with, could use a corpse and printed paper to defeat their enemies why could not the members of the DNC have used an 80-year-old man who walks — almost with a shuffle — and who speaks with a stutter, to defeat the hordes amassed to inflict a totalitarian regime upon the United States of America? If the GOP, instead of whining, had not chosen to recast the image of Mr. Trump’s numerous indictments and his criminal record would he have been able to assume and to maintain the role of their presidential nominee for the 2024 general election coming up in November?
As an independent voter and as a casual observer I have often wondered if the Republicans have had a better record on messaging than do the Democrats.
To have quarrelled over President Biden’s age and over Vice-President Harris’ ability to rule, in full view of the public, was tantamount to sheer suicide. It violated the teaching of Jesus about a house being divided within itself not having the ability to stand. But based on that gaffe or that gamble — depending how one views what the Democrats had been doing before the President decided not to seek a second term — an unseen hand must have intervened to save them from themselves. I believe that William Jennings Bryan was right when he said: “I hope the two wings of the Democratic Party may flap together.”
